dinCloud Case Study: DermaTran Health Solutions
Solution Overview
DermaTran Health Solutions is a national group of compounding pharmacies. Central to its operations is the Compounder application, which DermaTran needed to deploy multiple instances of simultaneously. When issues with its former app virtualization solution – XenApp – persisted, DermaTran evaluated alternatives, ultimately migrating to a turn-key cloud-based application publishing service.
App Virtualization Challenges
Elaborating on the issues DermaTran faced while running XenApp, DermaTran’s network administrator, Jesse Davis, said: “We had database-driven applications that, due to registry constraints, would not allow multiple instances of the application to open using different database servers. Within the Citrix XenApp environment, there was an issue with the client drive mapping that wouldn’t allow connectivity from the XenApp layer through to the client mapped drives.”
Davis elaborated on their issues, “The first hurdle we were forced to overcome was printing. We needed to print to a local area network (LAN) printer from XenApp opened on a XenDesktop instance without a VPN connection between our LAN and the LAN within the cloud provider’s infrastructure.”
Davis continued, “The next challenge was client folder pass-through from the local workstation to the XenDesktop and then to the XenApp. The drives passed from the local computer into the XenDesktop were functional; however, if you tried to access the same path from the XenApp, you would get an unspecified error from the Citrix platform. An ongoing challenge throughout the other issues was when a XenApp or XenDesktop failed to launch properly.”
Davis remarked that all attempts to resolve the issues by Citrix and its previous cloud provider failed, at which point they decided to seek alternates.
Solution Criteria and Results
Today, DermaTran is using dinCloud’s dinApp application publishing platform. dinApp allows organizations to run efficiently without being held back by applications that cannot run on modern infrastructure, or applications that require multiple instances. “dinCloud listened to our needs and provided a working solution through dinApp, a vital component to the success of our architecture. Now we can deploy those legacy applications seamlessly to the same client without any of the issues previously experienced To our end users, the applications look no different than an application native to their desktop,” said Davis.
“dinApp gives us the ability to operate efficiently and cooperatively across four geographically diverse locations, allowing all users in each location to access all applicable applications and communicate effectively about them. The seamless desktop integration provides our employees with an easy to understand application access method that mimics that of a standalone workstation. Pricing of dinCloud’s services lowered our bill by almost 2/3rd while providing all of the functionality we required,” pronounced Davis.
Future Outlook
In addition to the dinApp solution, DermaTran is currently using another dinCloud hosted workspace solution – dinHVD – enabling remote workers to connect to a secure desktop while working outside of the office. “The ability to manage the security of the workstation through Group Policy – such as sleep timers, RDP, timeouts due to inactivity, etc. – allows us to ensure that access is restricted properly, therefore meeting our PCI and HIPAA requirements. Additionally, we utilize a BYOD environment. The hosted desktops provide a uniform work environment regardless of the device our users choose to work from, whether it’s Vista, Windows 7 or 8, or a Mac,” said Davis.
Davis says dinCloud continues to work well for them in its current configuration, but DermaTran will continue to scale its infrastructure in accordance with business growth.
About dinApp
For more information about dinApp, visit: www.dinCloud.com/dinApp
